1. Can you tell a person’s race by looking at their DNA? Can you tell something
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Question
1. Can you tell a person’s race by looking at their DNA? Can you tell something about their population ancestry (i.e. whether their ancestors come from Africa, Asia, and/or Europe)?
2. Is there any single gene that allows a person to be identified as a member of a particular race?
3. Do geographic populations (people of Asian, African, or European ancestry) have more genetic variation within them or between them?
4. Did culture evolve in human ancestors all at once, or gradually? What is the evidence that supports your conclusion?
Explanation / Answer
1. According to various scientists, "race" was biologically inaccurate and it is not a biological concept. There are no races but individuals that sometimes are more related to each than others. However, DNA from ancestry can be identified depending of the maternal inheritance although the problem is that there is no complete database for such an option and secondly, genetic variation is occurring continuously, so it is a hard task to identify in a proper manner.
Lineage based approaches analyze DNA on the Y chromosome which is passed down almost unchanged from father to son or else analyze mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down nearly unchanged from mothers to their children. The slight changes in these chromosomes can be used as markers to identify the lineages. Lineage testing can identify the ancestry depending on the data availability.
2. It is not the case that there are any specific genes that can be used to identify a person's race.
3. The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. On study involved 1000 individuals from 41 populations and using 800 genetic markers the result revealed that polynesians and micronesians have almost no genetic relation to melanesians, rather polynesians and micronesians closest relationships are to taiwan aborigines and east asians. And that groups that live in the islands of Melanesia are remarkably diverse.
4. Culture defined as variation acquired and maintained by indirect and direct social learning is common in nature, but in Homo sapiens it led to a cultural evolution process with great adaptive value. Cultural transmission works as a cumulative inheritance system allowing members of a group to incorporate behavioral features not only with a positive biological value, but sometimes also with a neutral or negative biological value. The discovery and learn and to test and evaluate and to reject or to incorporate the behavior through trial-an-error is the basis of human culture and therefore, it takes long way to acquire those culture that modern humans are accustomed to.
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